Interview with Carly Kind, newly appointed Privacy Commissioner at the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner

Extract from a Communications Law Bulletin interview, via the OAIC website

Lewis Graham: What are you most looking forward as part of your new role as Australia's Privacy Commissioner?

Carly Kind: There could be no more exciting role in my view than the role of Australia’s Privacy Commissioner. Privacy issues grow in relevance and complexity with each passing day, and there is a clear and resounding social licence among the Australian community for a stronger approach to privacy regulation. The Australian legal framework embeds some interesting approaches and also has some limitations, and there are ambitious proposals afoot to bring that framework up to speed with changing community attitudes, expanding threats and advancing technologies. The regulatory approach in Australia embeds a three-commissioner model which creates an opportunity for novel synergies between different types of information rights. All of this together amounts to a unique opportunity to adopt, model and embed really novel and effective approaches to privacy regulation that are fit for purpose to meet the challenges of new and emerging technologies.

Lewis: Are there any particular developments in the data protection and privacy landscape that you think will particularly occupy you during your tenure as Privacy Commissioner?

Carly: The standard answer to that question is to reference the recent generative leap in artificial intelligence and the birth of a range of AI-driven tools, and while those kinds of advances are certainly interesting and relevant to the data protection space, I think the answer to your question is probably slightly more mundane; that is, many of the most concerning and harmful practices in the privacy landscape have been commonplace for some time, and we still have a lot of work to do to ensure those practices are properly regulated and that harm is minimised for citizens and consumers.